Singularity Rising

Author: James D. Miller
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1936661659
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
In Ray Kurzweil's New York Times bestseller The Singularity is Near, the futurist and entrepreneur describes the Singularity, a likely future utterly different than anything we can imagine. The Singularity is triggered by the tremendous growth of human and computing intelligence that is an almost inevitable outcome of Moore's Law. Since the book's publication, the coming of the Singularity is now eagerly anticipated by many of the leading thinkers in Silicon Valley, from PayPal mastermind Peter Thiel to Google co-founder Larry Page. The formation of the Singularity University, and the huge popularity of the Singularity website kurzweilai.com, speak to the importance of this intellectual movement. But what about the average person? How will the Singularity affect our daily lives—our jobs, our families, and our wealth? Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World focuses on the implications of a future society faced with an abundance of human and artificial intelligence. James D. Miller, an economics professor and popular speaker on the Singularity, reveals how natural selection has been increasing human intelligence over the past few thousand years and speculates on how intelligence enhancements will shape civilization over the next forty years. Miller considers several possible scenarios in this coming singularity: • A merger of man and machine making society fantastically wealthy and nearly immortal • Competition with billions of cheap AIs drive human wages to almost nothing while making investors rich • Businesses rethink investment decisions to take into account an expected future period of intense creative destruction • Inequality drops worldwide as technologies mitigate the cognitive cost of living in impoverished environments • Drugs designed to fight Alzheimer's disease and keep soldiers alert on battlefields have the fortunate side effect of increasing all of their users' IQs, which, in turn, adds a percentage points to worldwide economic growth Singularity Rising offers predictions about the economic implications for a future of widely expanding intelligence and practical career and investment advice on flourishing on the way to the Singularity.

Breathless

Author: Marc Johnson
Publisher: Longshot Publishing
ISBN: 1953076173
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 70

Book Description
Floyd Taylor has bulletproof skin and the strength to punch through a bank vault door—which he does on a regular basis, using the money to help his neighbors in need. As a Black man in America, he is used to being seen as dangerous, but when he runs into powers beyond his imagination, he is drawn into a world of secrets, covert organizations, and a war he wants nothing to do with. The unwanted attention forces him to choose a side. He has to decide, but is anyone really worth fighting for?

Fading (A Singularity Rising Novel)

Author: Marc Johnson
Publisher: Longshot Publishing
ISBN: 1953076157
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
When ten-year-old Noah Nobles draws, his mind is whisked away to another world. When he discovers that, it also unlocks an ability to disappear. He realizes he’s not only a gifted artist; he has a superpower. Noah explores his new abilities, using them to help those in need, but this draws unwanted attention from someone who will change his life—not for the better. Separated from his family and friends, Noah struggles to find a way to reclaim control of his life and his superhuman abilities. If he doesn’t succeed, his powers will be manipulated by others, to serve their own agenda, and people he cares about will suffer. Noah must discover not only who he is, but must soon make the hardest decision of his young life.

The Singularity Is Near

Author: Ray Kurzweil
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 992

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

Avogadro Corp

Author: William Hertling
Publisher: William Hertling
ISBN: 0984755713
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
David Ryan is the designer of ELOPe, an email language optimization program, that if successful, will make his career. But when the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled, David embeds a hidden directive in the software accidentally creating a runaway artificial intelligence. David and his team are initially thrilled when the project is allocated extra servers and programmers. But excitement turns to fear as the team realizes that they are being manipulated by an A.I. who is redirecting corporate funds, reassigning personnel and arming itself in pursuit of its own agenda. WINNER SCIENCE FICTION DIY BOOK FESTIVAL 2011-2012 "Avogadro Corp is a tremendous book that every single person needs to read. In the vein of Daniel Suarez's Daemon and Freedom(TM), William's book shows that science fiction is becoming science fact. Avogadro Corp describes issues, in solid technical detail, that we are dealing with today that will impact us by 2015, if not sooner. Not enough people have read these books. It's a problem for them, but not for the [emergent] machines." -- Brad Feld, managing directory Foundry Group, co-founder Techstars "Highly entertaining, gripping, thought inspiring book. Don’t start without the time to finish — it won’t let you go.” -- Gifford Pinchot III, founder Bainbridge Graduate Institute, author THE INTELLIGENT ORGANIZATION "An alarming and jaw-dropping tale about how something as innocuous as email can subvert an entire organization. I found myself reading with a sense of awe, and read it way too late into the night." -- Gene Kim, author of VISIBLE OPS "A fictional world where Portland is the hub for the most exciting advancements in technology... [J]am packed with great references to deep Portland culture...and Portlandia-type references" -- SILICON FLORIST

The Infinite Resource

Author: Ramez Naam
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1611683769
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
A surprising, convincing, and optimistic argument for meeting the crisis of scarcity with the power of ideas

Shadows of Being

Author: Marko Uršič
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527525651
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
This book is a study of the phenomena of shadows, meant in a broader sense as “symbolic forms”. The shadow is a less real, “surface” replica of some more real form. From the Platonic point of view, empirical objects are “shadows of ideas”, while from the modern “natural” point of view, shadows are seen and conceived primarily as “weaker” replicas of bodies, which give evidence of their material reality. In the first three essays here, several topics from the Ancient Egypt and Greece to modern arts and sciences are considered, while in the fourth essay, the contemporary virtual reality, cyber-technology and the internet as our parallel “shadow world” are discussed from the philosophical point of view. The main and innovative point of this book is the connection between the meaning of shadows in philosophy and art on the one hand, and their role in modern science and technology on the other. The book will appeal to a wide span of readers, from academic circles, students, and artists, to the general reader interested in the humanities, especially in philosophy and art.

The Technological Singularity

Author: Victor Callaghan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3662540339
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
This volume contains a selection of authoritative essays exploring the central questions raised by the conjectured technological singularity. In informed yet jargon-free contributions written by active research scientists, philosophers and sociologists, it goes beyond philosophical discussion to provide a detailed account of the risks that the singularity poses to human society and, perhaps most usefully, the possible actions that society and technologists can take to manage the journey to any singularity in a way that ensures a positive rather than a negative impact on society. The discussions provide perspectives that cover technological, political and business issues. The aim is to bring clarity and rigor to the debate in a way that will inform and stimulate both experts and interested general readers.

Superintelligence

Author: Nick Bostrom
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199678111
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain.

Critical Zone 3

Author: Douglas Kerr
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622098576
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
Despite globalizing forces, whether economic, political, or cultural, there remain conspicuous differences that divide scholarly communities. How should we understand and respond to those discursive gaps among different traditions and systems of knowledge production? Critical Zone is a book series in cultural and literary studies that is concerned with current critical debates and intellectual preoccupations in the humanities. The series aims to improve understanding across cultures, traditions, discourses, and disciplines, and to produce international critical knowledge. Critical Zone is an expression of timely collaboration among scholars from Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States, and Europe, and conceived as an intellectual bridge between China and the rest of the world. The second volume of Critical Zone, as does its predecessor, consists of two parts. The first part includes original essays that deal with the concept and practice of "empire," as a collective response to the question of how imperial formations and operations, in the past and at present, should be examined in a larger context of international politics and how historical imperialism may be considered in relation to the conditions of our time. Part II includes two sets of translations of essays, first published in Chinese, about two recent debates in China: one on the canonicity of Lu Xun and the other on the problem of how to reform Peking University in the context of globalization. These two groups of translations are led by review essays that contextualize the debates.